In The Payoff, Anne, the main character and narrator, goes through a sort of life changing event in this

story. Anne learns several things about adult knowledge. She realizes that, because of her home life, she hasnt really been socialized into the adult culture in her society. She has a sort of nave innocence about her, such as when she attempts to ask the principal if he thinks Ms. McDaniel is maybe too young for him, in her self-authored blackmail letter. Anne also seems to realize that there are certain aspects of adult life that just arent explicable in the plain language shes used to with her parents. Things are more complex than she thinks they are or wants them to be. Her relationship with Louise begins to change as she sees that Louise is more at home in the adult world because of her parental guidance or lack therefore. Anne says that Louise gazed at me impatiently, with the look of someone who in two or three years would no longer want to be my friend. Anne sees that people and circumstances people find themselves in constantly change. She also learns compassion for her fellow human when she realizes that not all relationships such as the one between the principle and Ms. McDaniel are coercive. She sees that her teacher, Mrs. Payne, was once very much like Ms. McDaniel, and because of that she learns to understand why Mrs. Payne is the way she now is, and she now understands that one mustnt judge so quickly because everybody walks a difficult path in life.